


Barely Hanging On

by AkelaKela



Series: Liam Dunbar [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Scott, Angst, Beta Liam, Dad Scott McCall, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Liam, Hurt/Comfort, Liam and Scott, Liam has issues, Liam has nightmares, Liam has panic attacks, Liam-centric, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Scared Liam, Scott Mccall is a dad, Scott is a Good Alpha, alpha-beta dynamics, big brother Scott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-24 07:06:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkelaKela/pseuds/AkelaKela
Summary: Liam doesn't always want to ask for help when he needs it.





	Barely Hanging On

Liam told himself that he wasn't weak. He played Scott's voice over and over in his head.

Repeated the words to himself countless times until they meant something completely different.

When the walls of his room swam above him and he had to dig his claws into his palms until blood flowed, when his breath wouldn't stay in his lungs, when he couldn't see straight or when he saw things that he knew weren't there, he'd repeat over and over again.

_'You're not a monster. You're a werewolf. Like me.'_

_You're supposed to be better than this! Stronger! You're supposed to be there for people once in a while instead of running to them crying every time you get scared!_ Was what they meant to him now when he whispered them to himself, shakily under his shallow breaths. He would scream at himself in his head, kick himself constantly at every slip up. He barely slept now. The closest he got was a fitful doze while he lay there, rigidly in bed pretending that he couldn't feel the berserker behind him. Pretending that he couldn't smell the rank stench of it's sweat. Pretending that he couldn't hear the deep breathing as though it was centimetres away from him, spraying it's hot breath down the back of his neck.

The nightmares he got when he did drop into sleep were terrible. He'd wake gasping for breath at best and in the middle of a choked scream at worst. Images of him crucified on a tree as hunters took potshots at him, of Scott being tortured until his heart gave out, of him standing helpless as his mother and step-father were flayed before his eyes stuck in his mind. 

_The worst were the ones where he was standing in the library on that night. A ghost, begging himself to stop as he slowly, painfully, killed Scott. It was always him who tore at Scott's heart before he walked away._

_They'd gone away before. He'd thought that he'd be just fine. That he'd never have to feel the fear and anxiety. Never have to tell himself it's not real over and over again, know it was true and still not truly believe it. But everything had come crashing back down on him in full force ever since that night in the school library. The crippling guilt suddenly bearing down on him when Mason had looked at him. Really looked at him. He'd seen him shift before. Seen the claws, the fangs, the glowing eyes and distorted face._

_But he'd never looked at him that way before._

_And Liam knew why._

_He'd never looked at him like that before because he'd never seen Liam before. He'd never seen his best friend for who he really was. A monster. Liam had felt the depraved rage, the primal, terrible feeling of pure, dark power. He'd beaten, broken Scott. He'd broken the person that had offered him a place in the world. A comforting hand, a warm hug. He'd looked into a pair of dark eyes with his glowing ones and wanted their owner to die. He'd wanted to see the fear on the tanned face that held them before he dealt the death blow._

_Scott had tried to fend him off, fight him without hurting him. And Liam hadn't cared. He knew why Scott's eyes wouldn't turn red, why his claws remained hidden. He knew that Scott wouldn't lay a hand on him if he had a choice. He could smell the roiling emotions rolling off him. The conflict between the Alpha and the man. The Alpha wanted to put a savage beta in his place. The man wanted to comfort him, to hold his hand in the face of grief._

_All this, Liam knew and didn't care._

_He watched the man make his choice, turn to face the moonlight flooding in the window and hated him for it. He had hated him for trying to save his own life, because that wasn't what Scott ever did. What he had ever done._

_But it wasn't enough. Even when the Alpha stared back at him, struck him with blows of steel, they didn't hurt as much as they should. Liam had convinced himself before that the Super Moon had given him that power. That Scott had been afraid. Scott had evaded, dodged and ducked Liam's punches more than he returned them, bought time by begging Liam to see the truth every time he caught his breath._

_But he knew now that none of that was true. That still, even as Scott was faced with betrayal and death at the hands of his Beta, he'd chosen to keep him alive, giving him another chance. Even if it cost him his life._

_And it had._

_He had felt the life leave his Alpha. He'd watched the light die from his eyes, heard the sound of him begging Liam to stop._

_Liam knew that it had been Theo who dealt the killing blow. Theo who had punctured Scott's heart._

_But to him, Scott had died under his claws._

_And even if he hadn't, it had been Liam who'd thrown him to the wolf that took his life._

_But in this dream his consciousness was a ghost, a silent spectator that neither Scott nor the him he was seeing could hear. They couldn't hear him beg and sob and fall to his knees, watching himself as he thrust his claws into Scott's chest and punctured his heart._

_He falls to his knees beside Scott sobbing. He always does. It's happened so many times over, but the guilt and grief are so intense that he feels a splitting, rending pain, physical pain in his chest. It's like his body is collapsing in on itself, his chest caving in, making sure that he can't draw a breath over the crushing weight and the sobs and the boiling tears flowing down his face._

_No matter how many times it's happened, he knows that it will never hurt any less. Because how could it?_

_How could it ever get better when he sees Scott's mother run in, falling to her knees beside her son, begging him to wake up, trying to revive him, crying and telling him that he can't be dead, that he's all she has left._

_The selfish rage he smelled on himself earlier has melted away, burned out by the white-hot guilt in his heart._

_He'd missed Hayden. Loved her. He'd thought that he'd loved her with all that he had, with every piece of himself._

_But when he saw Melissa, he knew that that wasn't true._

_Her panic, fear and shear desperation was more frantic than he'd ever felt. She wouldn't, couldn't accept the fact that her son was dead. Liam hadn't been able to either. Scott was the true Alpha. He never ran, never cowered. He bowed before no one._

_And here he was, his corpse sprawled on the blood-streaked library floor. His body was broken and had stopped leaking blood long ago._

_His face was human again. And in death, he looked more young, more boyish than ever. Liam had seen the young man beneath the older one a precious few times before. He'd heard his voice when Scott had pulled him from the old well, looked into his eyes when he's broken down in the forest._

_Gone was the guarded smile that Scott had for everyone, the protective look that crept through his eyes like a hunter in a forest. The pointed ears, the powerful double fangs and mighty claws. His face was smooth again, thin hair barely shadowing his lip._

_He'd worn the face of boy turned into a man too soon for too long._

_And when Liam saw the young face beneath, he felt his heart truly break._

 

The dreams were more vivid than anything he'd ever seen. Every horrible detail was always there. The stenches of blood, anxiety and fear were always assaulting his sensitive nose. His ears were always ringing from the gunshots and screams, whether they came from his mouth or not. 

He would wake with tears streaming down his face and the feeling of something breaking painfully in his chest.

 _"Hit me."_ He'd said it not only because he needed to get angry, but because he knew he deserved it. he deserved whatever little kick or punch Scott could force himself to send his way. He wished that Scott would just beat it all out of him. The guilt, the fear, the pain. And when his eyes glowed and his caws slid out, the burning anger that flowed through them wasn't for Scott. No, it was for him. It was the pathetic self-hatred and bottled up rage that pushed him into the metal door and busted it down.

He's so breathless and trapped in helpless panic that he must have had fainted, because there is no way that he just fell asleep after the terror and guilt and hatred that he could feel still boiling in his heart. He knows he's asleep because he's dreaming again. And it will be along, long time before he wakes up.

 

_"Liam? **Liam!** " Scott's voice seemed like it was coming from far away, even to Liam's sharp ears. _

_He winced, blinking to clear the sticky sensation from his eyes. He jerked awake quickly when the sharp, pungent stench of wolfsbane and blood hit him. He felt the chains wrapped all around him, around his arms, chest and legs. They burned where they were touching his bare skin._

_The forest was dark around him. He looked over at Scott and his anxiety immediately spiked. Scott hadn't just been chained to the tree next to him._

_Huge wooden stakes had been driven through the palms of his hands and through his shoulders into the trunk of the tree behind him. A deep gash ran the length of his stomach and his tattered jeans were stained to the knees with blood._

_Thick blood dripped shinily from the deep puncture wounds in the dim light. The slash wound across his stomach was deep. It wasn't healing. Liam could smell both the wolfsbane soaked wood and the pain rolling in waves off his Alpha._

_"Scott?" He'd meant to offer him a source of comfort, but the voice that he'd tried to send out strong and unafraid dropped from between his dry lips in a pathetic whimper instead._

_Scott only offered a pained grimace that Liam knew was supposed to be a smile of encouragement. His kind eyes were filled with tears of pain and his brow was creased._

_'It'll be OK.' Was what he would have said if he'd had the strength to talk._

_But he didn't and that alone scared Liam. He'd seen his Alpha hurt before. He'd seen him badly injured._

_But the fear that stabbed at his heart wasn't something he could control even though he knew Scott could smell it on him too._

_He opened his mouth to say something, to offer some scrap of reassurance, but it was too late._

_An axe whistled through the air, smashing through the top of Scott's head and embedding itself in the wood of the tree. Blood coursed down on either side of the cruel metal blade, showering his beta's face with bits of brain matter and blood._

_The tears fall one by one, hot and burning as they run quicker and quicker down his face._

_He couldn't look away. Scott's head had been cleaved open from his forehead to his nose. His dark eyes were wide open and stared out at nothing, the long dark lashes gummed together with blood._

_There's blood all over him and the smell of death is crippling. He hopes he's next because he know that he can't go on living. He can feel it._

_He can feel what once was. What he'd had mere seconds ago. The emotional tether holding him to Scott. He can feel the threads between them snap. Can feel the shattered pieces of the bond between them stabbing into his heart a thousand times over and he lets out a shaky breath of air._

_He's heard about how strong the bond between an Alpha and a beta of his bite is. He's even felt it before. When Scott had pulled him up and out of the old well. When he'd seen the look on Scott's face when he smelled the fear and determination on his beta in the catacombs in Mexico. When he'd been willing to fight for Scott._

_But this is something else entirely._

_He's never felt this way. Not even when his own father died._

_The feeling of loss is worse than anything he's ever felt. It's like someone has dug a hole in his chest. A human sized hole that will never again be filled. The pain in his chest increases tenfold by the second. He feels broken. He'll never be whole again._

_Liam's face is covered in blood, his tears quickly cutting sharp trails of white through the dark red staining his cheeks. His grief is mixing with anger and guilt and every other thing he's ever felt in his short life and he lets rip a howl of grief that was meant to sound like a name, but he chokes on it, unable to tear his golden eyes away from his fallen Alpha._

He wakes, tears pouring down his face with his heart in his mouth. He wraps his arms around a pillow, curling tightly in on himself as the sobs shake him.

The berserker is gone, but he is left with something even worse. The image of Scott's dead, staring brown eyes is burned into his mind. The huge gash in the middle of his head, the blood pouring over his face. The sickening odour of death and Liam's own grief still sticks in his nostrils.

He realises that he's shaking like a leaf. The climate is uncomfortably hot, but Liam can't stop shivering.

He burrows deep under the covers when all he really wants to feel is one person's arms around him, whispering reassurances in his ear. He wants to smell fear and worry melt away and be replaces by a cocktail of emotion he can't identify at first until he hears what Scott is saying.

' _You're okay Liam. You're okay.'_ He sounds worried, concerned and... _relieved._ Like he needs the reassurance more than Liam.

The worry was palpable in his tone, but Liam was too cold and too dizzy to bring himself to care, to think. All he could feel was safe, his wolf taking over.

_Scott is Alpha. Alpha is safe. Scott is safe. Scott is here so Liam is safe._

Liam can't take it much longer. His wolf takes over, pure instinct sliding his window up, his feet flying, carrying him across town to Scott's house. He comes to himself crouched outside his Alpha's window like a demented gargoyle dressed only in his boxers. 

Scott's scent is familiar, warm and safe like a thick, soft blanket. He smells like menthol shampoo, Old Spice aftershave and denim. Liam can hear him murmuring equations under his breath. He's studying for a Chemistry test that Liam knows he's going to bomb.

He knows that going back home will mean worse and worse nightmares. Attacks again and again until he can't stop crying and can't pull himself together even to leave his room. So he settles himself on his back on the roof and listens to Scott study, brush his teeth and slip into bed.  He falls asleep listening to even, steady breathing, falling quickly into a deliciously dreamless sleep. He wakes hours later, crashing down through the air. The right side of his face makes direct contact with the ground and the skin from above his eyebrow to below his cheekbone splits.

He claps a hand to the cut when it starts to bleed into his eye and looks around, completely disoriented.

He's lying in the bushes outside of Scott's house half-naked and now covered in twigs, leaf bits and bleeding from his face.

 _Must be going crazy_. It takes him a few minutes to recall, only foggily, sprinting over to the McCall house and crouching like crazed, half-naked version of Batman outside the upstairs window.

 Liam doesn't say anything. He knows that there's a 99.9% chance that Scott got his scent outside his house the next morning or that he heard the commotion in his front yard. He keeps going to school, showing up later and later every day. The dark circles under his eyes get worse and he frequently has to ice his face in the morning to bring down the swollen tears glands from crying for hours every night. He knows his grades will start slipping. He knows it isn't healthy, that he does need help. He can barely stay awake in class. His head always hurts and his eyes are always heavy. He feels sick every waking moment of every day.

But every time he thinks of just _telling_ _someone_ , just saying something, he doesn't.

Everyone has their issues, he reasons with himself. Everyone had their own shit to deal with and him being the little crybaby who always needed a shoulder to cry on wasn't going to help the pack. If he told his parents he'd be packed off to therapy that they couldn't afford and given pills that they couldn't pay for.  His medication and checkups were expensive. They thought that they kept their worries and bills well hidden, but Liam's ear were sharper than they knew and he could smell the perpetual stress that his mother and step-father were under. He was sixteen years old. He could deal.

Until he couldn't.

It was just lacrosse practice and he's been sent to take a lap by Coach, who isn't in a very good mood after being beaned in the balls by an awry shot. He'd yelled something about his one good testicle before ordering Liam to take a lap around the field. Liam was so tired that it wasn't even a run. He was barely jogging. He could barely get one foot in front of the other and he was getting dizzier and dizzier. As he passed Coach, who was doubled over still cursing, he faltered, tripping and just barely regaining his balance. He flailed his hands out, trying to stand straight, but he couldn't see straight but the horizon was suddenly slanted and before he knew it, his eyes had rolled back into his head and he was out cold on the field.

He's woken by Scott's gentle voice. He's lying on a bed of some sorts. When he moves his right hand to rub his eyes, he finds an IV taped to the back of it.

"Hey. You OK?" In any other situation he would have growled out a cutting remark along the lines of the question being absolutely useless, but all Liam did was nod. They're in a hospital ward. The curtains have been drawn around his bed halfway and it's dim. The shades on the window are down and the AC is a little cold for his liking. Scott is seated on a chair next to the bed, still in full Lacrosse gear.

There's a thin blanket tucked over Liam's lower half and he's still dressed in the grey workout T shirt and sweatpants he'd been wearing at practice.  _Thank God for small mercies_. He thinks, absolutely mortified at the thought of having his clothes changed by someone else. The smell of the hospital is throwing him off-kilter. He hates hospitals. 

 "You passed out Liam. I don't think you're okay." Scott tried to keep his tone from being accusatory, but Liam did hear worry leach into his voice.

He tried to keep from wincing. The last thing he'd wanted to do was worry anyone, especially Scott. He knew how smart he was, and the only thing keeping his grades low was the constant distraction of having to save people. He looked up at the clock on the wall, fidgeting with the needle in his hand. Scott was missing a class at this very moment. Liam looked guiltily up at his Alpha. "I'm sorry. I must have been dehydrated." He offered weakly.

"You've been out cold for almost two hours.

_Two hours?! Scott had missed two hours of school to sit here and watch him snore?_

Liam felt even guiltier.

"I pulled a few all-nighters to try and get better grades. I haven't been sleeping properly. I'm sorry." Liam tried to sound as sincere as he could, knowing that Scott had been listening to his heartbeat for the past two hours. He also knew that Scott knew that that was a bare-faced lie.

He felt his heartbeat skip a little at the lie and felt even worse. He hated lying like this, especially to Scott. He narrowed his dark eyes at him a little, about to call Liam out on it, but he let it go when he caught the scent of anxiety beginning to to permeate the air.

He let Scott help him up and home, saying goodbye in a small voice before trudging up the stairs on unsteady legs to curl up in bed. He lay there for the rest of the day, slipping in and out of confused dreams. His parents came in to check on him at one point. He feigned sleep and was glad that werewolves ran hot when they decided that he had a fever he needed to sweat off.

Liam ventured down stairs after they were asleep and drank some water. He knew he should eat something, but he actually felt sick and only ended up carrying a glass of water to his bedroom. The nightmares only got worse that night and he was an emotional wreck by morning. He'd think that the dream was over, that he'd woken up and was really in bed, but another terror would lunge at him from a dark corner of his room. He'd die and wake up again, back in bed before he realised that he wasn't really awake. Eventually Liam lost count of how many times he's jerked awake in bed and been sucked back into the black vortex of his mind. He staggered into the bathroom, turning the shower on full blast. He barely noticed that he was still dressed in his shorts. He couldn't think, couldn't move. And then he couldn't breathe.

He clutched at his bare chest, sliding down the tiled wall of the shower, trying to get air into his lungs. He couldn't.

He couldn't tell whether he was hyperventilating or suffocating, but he just _couldn't_ _breathe_. The walls were closing in on him, he felt like he was being crushed, buried alive. He looked around wildly, half expecting to see a berserker or a wendigo standing just beyond the shower curtain. But there was no one there and for some reason, the panic in him swelled further. He was so desperate that he tried yelling for his parents, but he was so short of breath that nothing would come out.

He curled himself into a corner of the shower compartment, arms over his head to try and protect himself. Time seemed to blend together and finally fall away. It was even more difficult to breath hunkered down as he was, but he was too afraid to even lift his head. When his senses returned to him the skin on his fingertips and toes was pruney and he had shifted in fear. He stared at the extended claws on his right hand, memorising every detail of the long sharp appendages.

He had power. A gift.

_'You're not a monster. You're a werewolf. Like me.'_

He isn't a monster. He's something worse. 

A coward.

Liam had never hated himself more than he did in that moment, soaked to the bone and shivering, alone in the cold tiles. He'd felt self-loathing before but this was an all time low. All he could do was dry off as best he could and slip back into bed and try to warm up before his mother came to check on him.

 He feels her hand on his forehead, stroking before pressing the back of it to his neck to assess his temperature. She seems satisfied because she leaves and Liam feels so alone  He wanted to grab her hand and pull her into bed next to him to hold him and pat his head and tell him that it was just a dream like she did when he was a little kid.

But his stupid numbed teenage brain lets her leave, rationalising pushing everyone away and he's alone for the rest of the night to deal with the nightmares.

He's sick of calling them nightmares by now. There has to be a stronger word because everything feels all too real and he can't just turn over and go back to sleep because he can't wake up.

It's been days of hiding out in his room, not sleeping at all and eating even less. He's so weak that the days and nights all blend together.

His parents must have gotten seriously worried at some point because he wakes with the bitter taste of medicine on his tongue, covered in sweat and staring at a lukewarm glass of water on the table.

There's a note next to it which he doesn't bother to read and some pills which he doesn't take.

 He showers and dresses for school, opening his phone to find 20 missed calls from Scott, a few assorted calls and texts from Mason and the odd call from Stiles. And finally a cryptic message from Scott reading:

_'We need to talk today.'_

His chest twists nervously and he clicks off the phone without answering.

He goes to school, trying to calm the pounding in his chest and stop the nervous sweat from bubbling up his upper lip. Liam schools his face into a look of casual stress and pretends that he's just tired and recuperating from the fever.

He reeks of anxiety and guilt. The entire pack will be able to tell that he's a mess. He can't bring himself to care just now as he trudges into school and dumps his stuff in his locker before slumping over a desk in his first class of the day. He feels weak, tired and jittery. He searches the halls for the sound of Scott's voice and scans the classroom for his scent before he even realises what he's looking for. 

Liam catches it around the corner and relaxes, immediately feeling pathetic for clinging to his Alpha like a safety blanket. But he knows he can't help it and when Scott catches his eye before heading down the hall. He's so zoned and jittery at lacrosse practice that Coach orders him off the field in frustration, benching him.

He watches, attention half-cocked as Scott plays even worse than he had. He misses every goal, either sending the ball straight into the goalie's net or throwing wide, his shot going nowhere near the goalposts and is roundly chastised in no uncertain terms before being sent to the bench next to him. Scott wants to talk. Liam can tell in the slope of his shoulders, the way he's leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees. He's staring out at the other players on the field, but Liam can feel all of his Alpha's senses trained on him like a thousand pinpricks of gooseflesh across the back of his neck.

"Are you okay Liam?" He'd heard Scott open his mouth to ask, but the question still caught him of guard for some reason.

"I'm fine." He answered, too quickly.

"You're lying." It wasn't a question, wasn't even accusing. Liam couldn't even detect any disappointment in the tone of the words. It was just a statement. "Even if I couldn't smell it on you or hear your heartbeat, I'd be able to tell that there's been something wrong for a long time."

For a few seconds Liam can feel the same urge. The urge to pour of his heart to Scott, to tell him everything. The wolf inside of him is begging him to.

But other part of him fights it, knowing that the smell of his anxiety and stress is probably so strong that even Stiles could smell it and blows off the rest of practice, storming off and back home.

He lies on his back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and lets his mind numb. The thoughts are running through his mind faster and faster, working themselves up into a frenzy. But his body won't move. He's frozen over from the outside. It's like his mind and body have split apart, both acting of their own accord.

He lies there until he's sucked down into sleep, into another nightmare.

He watches himself again as he kills his Alpha. He watches his claws sink deep, puncturing his heart. Hears it falter, flutter and stop.

He jerks awake, bathed in sweat, tangled in the sheets on floor and gasping for breath that won't come. The rain is pouring outside and he'd glad for the sheets of water sluicing down his window. The room doesn't feel so closed off, so small and suffocating. It's a bit better. But not by much. He can already feel his throat closing off.

Shards of the window spray outwards as he leaps through it. glass splinters dig into his bare arms and chest for a few seconds before he lands on the ground.

He lands wrongly, pain shooting through his ankles and up his shins, but he sets off at a four-legged sprint before it dies away completely. Muscle memory takes him to his Alpha's house once more. The rain is pouring down ever harder. His short hair is dark with it, plastered to his forehead. Water stings his eyes. 

He should be fine with just climbing up the side of the house to sit beside Scott's window. The rain might mask his scent some, but he's too short of breath to go another step, he realises when he gets to the front door.

He falls against it, slamming his bare palm into it even as he's sliding down to the ground.

The wet cement of the doorstep is hard, rough against his bare legs and feet. He's still dressed in his boxer shorts, he dimly registers once his gaze flicks to his bare legs.

He prays that Scott answers the door because he doesn't know how to live down the embarrassment of Stiles finding him lying in a soaked heap in someone's doorway.

His prayers are not answered. Melissa McCall opens the door and barely holds in a shriek when Liam falls in, curled into a ball and shivering.

"Scott?" Her voice is wavering as she uncurls him, her fingers fluttering at his neck, checking for a pulse. 

Liam's vision is slanted as she lays him on his back. It's fading out and everything is coming to him in flashes. He hears his Alpha clatter down the stairs, the panic and hatred swelling and crashing over him anew. 

He hates himself for this. For dissolving into a mess the moment things get hard.

 _You can't even stop yourself from fucking it up with supernatural powers. You made your bed and now you can't even bring yourself to sleep in it,_ says a voice in his head.

This had been exactly what he hadn't wanted.

To run to Scott the moment things got difficult and prove how a bad of a basket-case he was.

And now he was doing just that, and with an audience to boot.

Then it's Scott hovering over him, lowering his voice, soothing and shushing. Asking him to breathe. But he still can't. He can hear it. The panic beginning to edge Scott's tone as he tries to fight it and push it out of his mind. Liam starts to smell it mixing with his own and making it that much worse. He's shivering and shaking, trying to curl up and get a little warmer even as his head smacks into the hard wooden floor beneath it. His body won't listen to him. Scott grabs ahold of his wrists, trying to calm him down but Liam can't hear him properly anymore. 

Finally Scott just resorts to dragging him bodily into the living room, half-carrying him onto the carpet. Melissa wraps a throw from the couch around him, brushing the wet hair from his eyes.

"Calm down Liam. Please, just try to breathe." Scott tries again and again with the way he'd tried with Stiles before. But if it doesn't make Liam worse, it doesn't make it any better for him.

When he tries it, it's a last resort, a desperate stab in the dark that he hopes won't chuck Liam farther into the deep end of his mind. He takes a deep breath and lets the red glow light up his closed eyes. He lays a grounding hand on his beta's shoulder. He opens his eyes and speaks. The six lengthened fangs flash in his mouth as the deep, bass tone of his command leaves his lips. 

 **"Stop."** And, not surprisingly, Liam stops. He stops moving, stops trying to breathe and just stares straight ahead like he can see through Scott, like there's something so terrifying right behind him that he's frozen in the terror that Scott smells on him. Wait-that isn't terror that Scott smells. 

It's guilt. 

And Scott knows exactly what's wrong. He can smell the fear lacing the overwhelming guilt and he feels a little guilty himself.

 **"Liam. I need you to breathe. Take one breath in, and then let it out. _Slowly_." ** His voice isn't Alpha-deep anymore. The only difference in it is the slightly lisp caused by his elongated canines. He speaks as slowly as he can, stressing each word.

He almost collapses with relief when Liam takes a breath. And another. And another. His heartbeat is racing and his anxiety is skyrocketing, but he isn't hyperventilating anymore and Scott can work with that. He helps his still-dazed beta to the couch.

"Liam, I need you to tell me what's wrong. I can't help you if you won't talk to me." Liam looks up at him, his brow wrinkled, his light blue eyes wide with fear and suddenly, they're somewhere else. Liam is perched on the edge of the old well, staring at him like he can't believe that he actually came to save him.

This time Liam doesn't lie or blow him off. 

"I've been having nightmares. I can't sleep. I can't breathe sometimes. I think they're panic attacks. Or anxiety attacks. Maybe both." Scott wants to ask, but keeps quiet. Lets Liam finish. 

"There are nightmares every night. I can't sleep. Ever. People are always dying. My parents, the pack-and you."

Saying it seems to cement something in Liam's head and a hard shudder rocks his body. His eyes shift. A hunted look crosses them like smoke being carried by the wind, clouding his pale eyes. Scott knows that look. The fear that Liam had broken through when they were plagues by the berserkers.

"It's okay Liam." Says Scott quietly.

 "The worst is when I keep dreaming about-. About you. About what I did to you." Liam's eyes are still glazed, unfocused. He's still shivering, clutching the blanket around him. His knuckles are white. "I'm always watching myself. Like some fucked up ghost that can't do anything. I can't stop me-myself. And it's always me that kills you. Not Theo." 

"I'm here Liam. I'm alive. I'm not hurt. See?" He reaches for Liam's hand, gently pulling it from the folds of the blanket. It's ice cold and that scares Scott a little bit. He lays Liam's hand on his chest, over his heart.

Liam's hand is limp, cold against his skin through his shirt. He presses it against Scott's warm body as if he can't believe the feeling of the beating heart inside. The expression on his face shifts a fraction before the fabric of his shirt is being crumpled between his beta's fingers. Scott realises that he can smell the tang of salt in the air. Those are tears running down Liam's wet face.

And then Liam crumples, his eyes clear and full for one split second before he squeezes them shut and lets the sobs wrack his body. Scott gathers him close, stroking the back of his head as Liam buries his face in his shoulder, crying like a baby.

He's not sure whether what he feels is forgiveness for his beta, but if it isn't, he hopes that it's a step toward it. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think that I'm very good at this. I feel like this entire work is a mess and I didn't quite get what I wanted out of it, but I hope you enjoy. Leave me your feedback below please!


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